Don't look now, but I think the average guy and gal will soon start to look past the current occupant of the White House to their next President. What is W. doing for us? It's 10 months after 9/11, and all we've done is round up some Taliban creeps and take them -- I am not making this up -- to Cuba! Oh, and we've locked up a couple of hundred people on our own soil, in total secret, with no lawyers allowed. Quite a few innocent lives have been lost, and lately we hear that the former frat president, now our President, is going to spend the next year spending billions to continue the family vendetta against that good old Satan Saddam.

The missiles will start flying in Iraq just in time (Bush thinks) to trigger a popularity spike that will get him re-elected. Fat chance!

The President's little mealy speech on corporate corruption did nothing to stop the stock market from tanking over the shenanigans of suits like Bush, Cheney, their Enron buddies, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, and all the slimy executives who belong to the same creepy club. (It will be a long, long list before it's finished.) Beating up on some podunk potentate and periodically warning everybody in America to get ready for smallpox ain't exactly going to win people over while they're watching their 401(k)s drop like a rock.

Unless the Democratic Party does something really stupid, like a ticket with Hillary on it, it's looking like 4 and out for Junior, just like for Poppy.